The introduction of prefabricated wood trusses has made modern construction faster and more efficient. The wood trusses are assembled in factories equipped with machinery for mass-fabricating the individual truss components, which are assembled on large assembly tables, before they are shipped to the construction sites. According to the conventional art the most time-consuming part of truss fabrication is the assembly process.
Inventors have in the past shown various types of jigs and/or mechanized assembly tables to facilitate the assembly of the wood trusses.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,212,421 shows an assembly table for wood structures having a table surface equipped for receiving templates at preselected locations, which in turn serve to position the truss components on the table before securing the joints of the truss with ready-made metal connectors. U.S. Pat. No. 3,068,484 shows an apparatus for fabricating wood structures, which includes clamping of the truss parts in a fixture before inserting the metal connectors. U.S. Pat. No. 4,567,821 shows an apparatus for assembling wooden trusses, which includes a frame supporting a clamp table with an adjustable grid that holds the truss components in place before securing the truss joints.
The devices according to the prior art, however, all suffer from the drawback that the erection or preparing of the assembly jig before truss fabrication can begin is cumbersome and time consuming. It is accordingly an object of the instant invention to provide a truss assembly apparatus that automatically, under control of a computer program, sets a plurality of jig stops in an assembly table, which overcomes the drawbacks of the known apparatus and jigs for truss assembly.